The Worm and the Apple; Down by the Station: Hail Amtrak

Published: February 12, 1989

A grandmother who hadn't visited New York for a year arrived during the bustling holiday season via the Metroliner from Wilmington. She emerged from Penn Station prepared, as usual, to engage in dubious battle for a taxicab on Seventh Avenue (she'd long ago learned to avoid Eighth).

Instead, she was happily dumbfounded to discover a taxi line in the underpass between the station and Madison Square Garden. A uniformed dispatcher from Amtrak presided over an orderly queue with quiet efficiency. And after a brief wait, she got a cab.

Amtrak established the taxi rank early last year in response to complaints from out-of-towners and even from some hardened New Yorkers. The constant battle for a cab was depressing and sometimes dangerous. It remains so on the Eighth Avenue side of the station, where hustlers offer unwary travelers ''help'' in finding a cab, grab their luggage, then extort money before returning it.

Amtrak's noble deed emulates the Port Authority's highly successful efforts to bring order out of chaos in the taxi lines at the Port Authority bus terminal and Kennedy Airport.

For recognizing that visitors' first impressions of the city count heavily - and that civility means a lot to everyone - Amtrak merits an apple.